The invention relates to a digital data delivery system, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for delivering packetized bursts of data to a computer.
As the popularity of point-to-point, land-based, digital data delivery systems such as the internet increases, the speed of these systems decreases due to the greater traffic. The bandwidth of the data being transferred across land-based digital data delivery systems is also increasing, which further reduces the speed of delivery. In addition, it can be very costly to use standard point-to-point delivery systems to deliver data serially to many points. Thus, it is desirable to provide an alternate means for point-to-multi-point delivery of high bandwidth digital data. It is also desirable to deliver the data using commercial off the shelf communication technologies such as direct broadcast satellite (DBS) technologies in order to reduce the cost of data delivery.
DBS technologies allow reception of audio and video signals via satellite with small satellite dishes having diameters of about 18 inches (45.7 cm). The audio and video signals originate from content providers who submit the signals to an uplink station. The uplink station transmits the signals to a satellite transponder which then broadcasts the signals across a wide region. Each DBS satellite dish receives the broadcasted signals and transfers them to an attached Digital Satellite System (DSS.TM. receiver. The receiver identifies which signals it is authorized to output, and outputs these signals to a television set. Thus, the DBS system acts much like a broadcast cable television network.
Commercial DSS receivers have a high speed data port called a Wide Band Data Port (WBDP). The WBDP was originally intended for the output of signals for high definition television (HDTV). However, there are currently two drawbacks to the use of HDTV. First, the transmission of HDTV signals requires approximately four times the bandwidth of regular television signals. With its higher quality comes a higher price for the reception of the programming. Second, HDTV receivers cost much more than standard television sets. Moreover, as the picture quality of standard sets becomes increasingly better due to the use of digital technology and other techniques, it is likely that the standard sets will exhibit quality almost as high as HDTV without the higher cost. Therefore, given the initial and recurring cost barriers to the use of HDTV, its future is in doubt.
Since HDTV has not become commercially successful to date, alternate uses for the WBDP are desirable. One such use is for the delivery of digital data to a computer. The WBDP provides a cost effective means for delivering digital data to a computer because it is a standard port on DSS receivers and, therefore, no additional hardware must be added.
A problem arises, however, with using the WBDP for delivering data to a computer, because the output from the WBDP is not in a format that commercial computer I/O cards can understand. The present invention solves this problem by buffering the WBDP output and converting it into a format which can be read by commercial off-the-shelf computer I/O cards. Thus, by adding a data bridge according to the present invention, a DBS system can receive not only audio and video signals, but also digital data such as electronic mail, graphics, multi-media programs, and other digital data streams.